Order F19-04

OFFICE OF THE PREMIER

Celia Francis
Adjudicator

January 29, 2019

CanLII Cite: 2019 BCIPC 05

Quicklaw Cite: [2019] B.C.I.P.C.D. No. 05

Summary: A journalist requested copies of an employee’s emails for a 12-hour period

in April 2017. The Office of the Premier disclosed three pages of records and said it was
not obliged under s. 6(1) (duty to assist an applicant) of the Freedom of Information and
Protection of Privacy Act to search the employee’s Recover Deleted Items folder for any
other responsive records. The adjudicator found that the Office of the Premier should
have searched this folder in the first instance and that, therefore, it had not complied with
its duty under s. 6(1). At the time of the inquiry, the requested emails were no longer in
the employee’s Recover Deleted Items folder because the system had automatically
deleted them from that folder and saved them to a backup server. The adjudicator
further found that, in view of the complexity, effort and cost involved, the Office of the
Premier is not obliged to restore the emails from the backup in order to respond to the
journalist’s access request.

Statutes Considered: Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, s. 6(1).

INTRODUCTION

[1] This case concerns whether a public body is obliged to search deleted
emails in response to an access request under the Freedom of Information and
Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). On April 7, 2017, a journalist made a request
to the Office of the Premier for all of the emails of its Executive Director,
Communications and Issues Management (Executive Director), “in all folders, for
the period of 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on April 6, 2017.” In late May 2017, the Office
of the Premier responded by disclosing three pages of records.

[2] The journalist complained to the Office of the Information and Privacy
Commissioner (OIPC) about the adequacy of the search the Office of the
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Premier had conducted, noting that a similar request by a political party had
yielded 91 pages of responsive records. In early June 2017, the Office of the
Premier told the journalist that it had searched again but had found no additional
records.

[3] In mid-June 2017, the journalist made a second access request, this time
for the message tracking logs1 for all emails to and from the same Executive
Director, including date, time, sender, recipient and message subject, for the
same period as his first request. The Office of the Premier disclosed 17 pages
of responsive records.2

[4] According to the fact report for this inquiry, the message tracking logs
indicated that the Recover Deleted Items folder contained emails responsive to
the journalist’s April 7, 2017 request. The fact report added that the Office of the
Premier did not search the Recover Deleted Items folder before its contents were
deleted and saved to the backup server in accordance with government policy. 3

[5] Mediation by the OIPC did not resolve the complaint and the matter
proceeded to inquiry. The OIPC received submissions from the journalist and
the Office of the Premier.

ISSUES

[6] The issues before me are:

1. Whether the Office of the Premier conducted an adequate search for
records and thus discharged its duty under s. 6(1) of FIPPA and, if not,

2. What is the appropriate remedy?

DISCUSSION

Adequate search – s. 6(1)

[7] Section 6(1) of FIPPA reads as follows:

1
A message tracking log is “a detailed record of all activity as email flows through the transport
pipeline on Mailbox servers. Any actions by a user that generates [sic] email would result in log
entries.” Affidavit of Senior Technical Architect, Office of the Chief Information Officer,
Technology Solutions, Ministry of Citizens’ Services, para. 10.
2
The Office of the Premier’s submission indicates that most of the emails were media advisories,
news releases and media articles; see message tracking logs, Exhibit A, Affidavit of Senior
Technical Architect, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Technology Solutions, Ministry of
Citizens’ Services,
3
Fact report, paras. 10 & 11. The Office of the Premier did not dispute these statements.
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6 (1) The head of a public body must make every reasonable effort to
assist applicants and to respond without delay to each applicant
openly, accurately and completely.

[8] Past orders have said that s. 6(1) “requires a public body to conduct an
adequate search for records that respond to the access request. The public body
must undertake such search efforts as a fair and rational person would find
acceptable in all the circumstances. This does not impose a standard of
perfection.”4

Submission of the Office of the Premier

[9] The Office of the Premier’s evidence is that its employees use Microsoft
Outlook. When an employee deletes an email in Microsoft Outlook, it moves into
the employee’s Deleted Items folder. When the employee deletes emails from
his/her Deleted Items folder (or when Outlook automatically deletes emails from
that folder, which it can be programmed to do at regular intervals), the emails
move into the employee’s Recover Deleted Items folder. The BC Government
has configured the Recover Deleted Items folder to retain emails for 33 days,
to capture them in the routine monthly backup of all data on government servers.
The Exchange Server automatically removes from the Recover Deleted Items
folder any email that has been in the folder for 33 days. This email removal
process runs in the background 24 hours/day and is a “continuous rather than
periodic process.” After an email has been in the Recover Deleted Items folder
for 33 days, it is “automatically permanently deleted” from the user’s account and
is then only available in the backup. Government policy direction, in place since
December 2015, prohibits employees from manually deleting emails in their
Recover Deleted Items folders (called “triple deletion”).5

[10] The Office of the Premier submitted that it complied with s. 6(1) in
searching for the responsive records. It acknowledged that a public body is
obliged to search for responsive records in Deleted Items folders. It argued,
however, that its obligation under s. 6(1) does not extend to searching Recover
Deleted Items folders. In its view, to “force” an employee to do so would be
inconsistent with proper records management6 and would “disregard” the
purpose of this folder,7 which it said are these:

4
Order 02-18, 2002 CanLII 42443 (BC IPC), at para. 7, for example.
5
Office of the Premier’s initial submission, paras. 14-16; Affidavit #1 of Senior Technical
Architect, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Technology Solutions, Ministry of Citizens’
Services, paras. 7 & 9. Office of the Premier’s additional submission (December 12, 2018);
Affidavit #2 of Senior Technical Architect, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Technology
Solutions, Ministry of Citizens’ Services, paras. 3-4. The quotes are from the additional
submission.
6
Office of the Premier’s initial submission, para. 35.
7
Office of the Premier’s initial submission, para. 50.
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 To ensure that all government emails are captured in the monthly

backups that store all data on government servers for a minimum of
13 months. The purposes of the backups are to assist investigations,
meet legal requirements (such as providing records for the purposes
of civil litigation) and assist with disaster recovery.
 To temporarily store emails that have been deleted from the Deleted
Items folder in the event that an employee realizes she or he made
a mistake with the initial deletion.8

[11] The Office of the Premier conceded that the requested records were likely
in the Recover Deleted Items folder at the time it received the journalist’s access
request. It said that this folder does not appear in an employee’s list of email
folders so the fact that stored emails remain in it is “not readily apparent.”9
However, the Office of the Premier also admitted that it is technically easy to
search the Recover Deleted Items folder. The Office of the Premier argued,
however, that it would be unreasonable to require it to carry out this search since
the emails “appear to be transitory”, “of no value” and are thus properly deleted.10

[12] The Executive Director gave evidence that, in his position, he received
a high volume of emails every day. He said he regularly deleted emails he
considered to be transitory. Based on his review of the message tracking logs,
the Executive Director said that he would have deemed the emails he received
on April 6, 2017 to be transitory and he would have deleted them to his Recover
Deleted Items folder. He said that, in keeping with his usual practice when
responding to FIPPA requests, he would have searched all of his Outlook email
folders, including his Deleted Items folder. The Executive Director said that he
would not have searched his Recover Deleted Items folder because the emails
in this folder were transitory and properly disposed of.11 The Office of the Premier
said that the message tracking logs show that the Executive Director sent only
one email.12 It provided a copy of this email with its submission, which
I understand to be the email it disclosed to the journalist.13

8
Office of the Premier’s initial submission, para. 14; Affidavit #1 of Senior Technical Architect,
Office of the Chief Information Officer, Technology Solutions, Ministry of Citizens’ Services,
para. 8.
9
Affidavit #2 of Senior Technical Architect, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Technology
Solutions, Ministry of Citizens’ Services, para. 3.
10
Office of the Premier’s initial submission, paras. 20-55. Office of the Premier’s supplementary
submission (December 12, 2018).
11
Affidavit of Executive Director, paras. 9-16. He also said he did not keep paper copies of the
emails or save electronic copies outside his Outlook account.
12
Affidavit #1 of Senior Technical Architect, para. 13.
13
Office of the Premier’s initial submission, section 6, “Records (previously provided to the
Applicant).” The journalist’s request for review says that he received only one three-page email in
response to his request.
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Journalist’s submission

[13] The journalist argued that the Executive Director should not have deleted
the emails in the first place and the Office of the Premier should retrieve and
disclose them. He referred to former Commissioner Denham’s Investigation
Report F15-0314 (Access Denied report) in support of his position.

Analysis

[14] The Office of the Premier’s submission devoted considerable attention to

the supposedly transitory nature of the requested emails, arguing the Executive
Director properly disposed of them. It also suggested that the emails would be
“of little or no value” to the journalist.15 However, whether the emails were
transitory or valuable to the journalist is irrelevant, in my view. The journalist did
not request emails pertaining to a specified subject. He requested all of the
Executive Director’s emails for a 12-hour period. As such, all of the Executive
Director’s emails for that period were responsive to the request, whether
transitory or valuable.

[15] In my view, the Office of the Premier was obliged to search the Executive
Director’s Recover Deleted Items folder in addition to his other email folders. The
Office of the Premier argued that proper records management is essential and
that it includes the regular disposal of transitory records.16 I agree. I do not,
however, accept the Office of the Premier’s argument that searching the Recover
Deleted Items folder would have had “negative implications” for records
management, including the proper disposal of transitory records.17 The Office
of the Premier admitted that the responsive records were likely in the Recover
Deleted Items folder when it received the journalist’s access request. The Office
of the Premier’s evidence also shows that it is not technically difficult or onerous
to retrieve emails from the Recover Deleted Items folder. On the contrary, as
noted earlier, the Office of the Premier admitted that it would have been easy
to search that folder for the responsive records.18

[16] The Executive Director also admitted that it would have been easy to
respond to the request, given that it was for emails from the previous day. 19
He did not say he could not search the Recover Deleted Items folder for some
reason. Indeed, one of the purposes of the Recover Deleted Items folder is to
temporarily store emails that were mistakenly deleted from the Deleted Items
folder. The Office of the Premier also provided evidence that an employee can
go to the Recover Deleted Items folder (before the 33-day storage time expires)
14
Investigation Report F15-03, 2015 BCIPC 63 (CanLII).
15
Office of the Premier’s initial submission, para. 57.
16
Office of the Premier’s initial submission, paras. 34-36
17
Office of the Premier’s initial submission, para. 34.
18
Office of the Premier’s initial submission, paras. 52-53.
19
Affidavit of Executive Director, para. 9.
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to retrieve “wrongfully deleted emails.”20 This all suggests that an individual

employee can easily restore emails from the Recover Deleted Items folder.

[17] I also disagree with the Office of the Premier that retrieving the responsive
emails would have “disregarded” the purposes of the Recover Deleted Items
folder. Rather, it seems to me that responding to FIPPA requests is entirely
consistent with use of the folder for the purpose of meeting legal requirements.

[18] The journalist drew to my attention the Government Records Service

Guide on Transitory Records which gives the following direction to its employees:
“Do not destroy any transitory records that are relevant to a FOIPPA request or
legal discovery.”21 I also note former Commissioner Denham’s specific comments
on this issue in her Access Denied report:

It is important to note that once a public body receives an access to

information request, it must keep all records, including both transitory and
non-transitory records, in its custody or under its control. If these records
are responsive, the public body must produce them unless specific
exemptions to disclosure under FIPPA apply.22 [footnote omitted]

[19] The Office of the Premier did not comment on or dispute the validity of
these directions and their application to the Office of the Premier. It also did not
explain why, in light of such clear, unambiguous guidance, it did not retrieve the
relevant records from the Executive Director’s Recover Deleted Items folder,
either at the time of the request or, at the very least, before the emails were
deleted from that folder 33 days later.

[20] For the reasons given above, I find that, in failing to search the Executive
Director’s Recover Deleted Items folder for responsive records, the Office of the
Premier did not comply with its duty under s. 6(1) to respond to the journalist
“openly, accurately and completely.”

What remedy is appropriate?

[21] Given my finding that the Office of the Premier failed to comply with its
duty under s. 6(1), I must consider what remedy is appropriate. According to the
fact report for this inquiry, the emails are no longer in the Executive Director’s
Recover Deleted Items folder but they still exist on the government’s backup
server. The Office of the Premier did not dispute this statement. However, it
argued that it is not obliged to restore the contents of the Executive Director’s

20
Affidavit #2 of Senior Technical Architect, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Technology
Solutions, Ministry of Citizens’ Services, para. 3.
21
Journalist’s response submission, para. 38. He did not provide a copy of this guide but included
this quote.
22
Investigation Report F15-03, p. 18. The journalist referred to this passage in his response, at
para. 24.
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Recover Deleted Items folder from the backup server.23 The Office of the Premier
did not initially explain what would be required to restore the emails from the
backup servers in this case. However, in response to my request, the Office of
the Premier provided an additional submission and evidence on this issue. The
journalist did not respond.

[22] The Office of the Premier provided the following evidence on the issue
of restoring email backups:

 The email backup process is designed for disaster recovery, not retrieving
individual emails or mailboxes. Recovering emails from backup tapes is
a costly and time-consuming process.
 Email backups cannot be equated with an archival database. They are
stored in a mailbox database on one of 26 mail servers which support the
58,000 users in the Provincial government.
 To recover an email, Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO)
Enterprise Services employees, who must be pulled from other tasks,
require special approval and must follow strict procedures.
 It is not possible to retrieve the email messages of a single user. Rather,
an entire mailbox database, which might be shared by 2,200 users, must
be restored.
 The OCIO Enterprise Services staff need the name of the mailbox, a
timeframe and any topics to be searched, and must then generate a digital
image of the entire database hosting the mailbox in question.
 This requires producing “a full system image” for one of the 26 mail
servers at the relevant point in time. This takes approximately six hours of
staff and processing time and necessitates restoring significant volumes of
information that is irrelevant to the search.
 It is necessary to load the restored data onto a dedicated server and there
might not always be a server available.
 Once the restoration of the mailbox database is complete, OCIO
Enterprise Services staff can only reproduce an entire mailbox and must
then search it manually. These secondary tasks can take hours.24

[23] I accept that the government’s backup server is designed to allow it to

recover entire databases in the event of a disaster and it is not intended to be
a backup filing system or archive. I also accept the evidence that the process for
restoring email backups and retrieving individual emails requires considerable
effort and time on the part of staff. It is not, in my view, reasonable to expect the
OCIO Enterprise Services to take time from their regular work to carry out these

23
Office of the Premier’s initial submission, paras. 56-57.
24
Office of the Premier’s additional submission, paras. 9-10. Affidavit #2 of Senior Technical
Architect, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Technology Solutions, Ministry of Citizens’
Services, paras. 5-12. The OCIO Enterprise Services staff charge a ministry $1,000 to restore a
single mailbox for a single date.
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tasks in the case of normal access requests. In an extraordinary case, for

example, if there were reason to believe that an email had been improperly
deleted in an attempt to evade FIPPA obligations, I might consider it appropriate
to restore email backups. However, I do not consider this to be such a case.
There is no evidence of improper deletion of emails here.

[24] Past orders on the issue of deleted emails concluded that the s. 6(1) duty
does not extend to retrieving deleted records from backup tapes. In those cases,
two former Commissioners had evidence that it would be “complex, costly and
time-consuming” for public bodies to do so.25 Despite the passage of almost two
decades, it is evident that the technology for restoring email from the
government’s backups has not changed. The former Commissioners’ findings are
still applicable here, in my view.

[25] The Office of the Premier’s evidence has persuaded me that it would be
a complex, onerous and costly business to restore the requested emails. In the
circumstances of this case, I am satisfied that it is not reasonable to require the
Office of the Premier to restore the email backups in order to respond to the
journalist’s access request.

CONCLUSION

[26] I found above that the Office of the Premier should have searched the
Executive Director’s Recover Deleted Items folder for the responsive records and
that it had not, therefore, complied with its duty under s. 6(1) to respond to the
journalist “openly, accurately and completely.” However, I also found that the
Executive Director’s emails are no longer in the Recover Deleted Items folder
and it would not be reasonable in this case to order the Office of the Premier to
restore the email backups and search them for the responsive records. In light
of this finding, I confirm under s. 58(3)(a) of FIPPA that the Office of the Premier
has performed its duty under s. 6(1) respecting this latter issue.

January 29, 2019

ORIGINAL SIGNED BY

Celia Francis, Adjudicator

OIPC File No.: F17-70372

25
Order 02-25, 2002 CanLII 42454 (BC IPC), paras. 16-17; Order No. 73-1995, 1995 CanLII 482
(BC IPC), pp. 3, 5-6.